FLYING THE WORLD'S LONGEST AIR-MAIL ROUTE
Photograph by Peruvian Naval Air Force, courtesy Capt. H. B. Grow
CHILCA OF THE DESERT GAINS ITS LIVELIHOOD FROM TIIE SEA
One of many fishing villages of Peru, this little place south of Lima lies north of the nitrate
fields which have brought wealth to the coast towns of Chile. Here a rainless waste of sand
and rock extends from the ocean to the high Andes, a region seemingly destined to remain
barren for all time.
Clouds hid the crests of the bowllike
hills the next morning, as we taxied across
the field in a cloud of dust. No break
showed, but the pilot knew of an opening,
as he rose toward the rim, fog sweeping
to meet us through the gap like smoke
from a giant stack. We came through,
without hitting a corner, into sunshine on
the other side, and on up to 7,000 feet.
The earth spread below like an im
mense relief map-a rolling sea of black
and brown and red, with rocky crags and
castles and deep-cut dry beds of forgot
ten mountain freshets, baked by centuries
of sun and cut by winds which never
cease. It is the same for hundreds of
miles, but its riches have brought life into
the desert.
Occasionally we would pass a copper
or iron smelter or nitrate works, smoking
stacks, broad roofs of mills, a fringe of
little houses, and always, off at the side,
an adobe-walled cemetery with the crosses
of those who had given up the fight.
White lines on the darker waste marked
trails over which carts were bringing the
ore, or where men had trekked in search
of more. All that vast stretch of desert
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